


To Weather the Storm (hold tight)

by bitterbones



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 2k18, Angst, Character Death, Comfort Sex, Eventual Smut, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Ideological posturing, No major warnings apply, Post TLJ, Post The Last Jedi, Save Ben Solo, Some quotes from the novelization included, have no fear, it's not Rey or Ben
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-01 21:24:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14529474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterbones/pseuds/bitterbones
Summary: Leia dies on a warm spring night, in a bunker deep beneath the rolling fields of Chandrila.✲“How long will this last? When will it end?” She wonders aloud.“When willwhatend?”“This.”The grief, the connection; the tension between them that only seems to intensify with each meeting, each spoken word, each heady glance returned under guise of scrutiny.After a moment of quiet ponderance, he replies.“It won’t.”[The bond has been blissfully silent since Crait. Rey is woefully unprepared for the death of Leia Organa, and moreso for the shock that thrusts open the floodgates which had so diligently kept their minds separate. Her mind, and the mind of Ben Solo— the mind ofKylo Ren]





	1. Open the floodgates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissHarper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissHarper/gifts).



> This fic has been a long time in the making! A gift for MissHarper who won my 1,000 follower giveaway on Tumblr; meaning she got to give me a detailed prompt/outline for a fic she would like to see. The concept was more than interesting, and has clearly grown into a mini monster. Hence the four chapter indication. ;)
> 
> Link to the lovely MissHarper's Tumblr: [Link](http://thedarkside-and-thelight.tumblr.com/)

Leia dies on a warm spring night, in a bunker deep beneath the rolling fields of Chandrila.

Rey is the first one to feel her loss, the Force torn asunder by the brevity of her passing. It knocks the air from her lungs and sends her careening from her bunk onto the cold steel floor. She can hardly breathe as she stumbles through the halls of the bunker, sweating and panting, desperate to see Leia with her own eyes and know that she is wrong. Leia isn’t dead, she _can’t_ be. The galaxy needs her, the Resistance needs her. _Rey_ needs her. 

 

She is one of the few who was granted the override password to Leia’s quarters. With fumbling fingers she punches the numbers into the panel, failing twice in her haste before the door hisses open on her third attempt. 

 

There is no life in the room. Not a hint of the slow, steady breathing that accompanies restful sleep. Only silence and cold meet her. Leia’s form is still under Rey’s bleary stare, there is no rhythmic rise and fall, no soft snore. Nothing. 

 

Leia Organa is dead. 

 

Rey informs the Resistance leadership with a quiet sort of grief, she can’t manage much more than a few choked words before she stumbles away, back to her own rooms. She doesn’t want to watch the med droids tend to the corpse, or see Poe weep and clutch at Leia’s hand. The body is just a husk now. Leia is gone. 

 

Rey wraps herself in her thin sheets and buries her face in her knees, unable to comprehend what this means for the Resistance, for the galaxy. Leia had been their figurehead, their rallying cry. It was her visage that invoked hope, her history that was known by every person from Coruscant to the mining colonies of the outer rim. Leia Organa was a symbol of rebellion, and peace, and rebirth, and now she is dead. 

 

And what is left of her legacy? A band of misfits masquerading as a viable military faction. Who will rise to their call? Who would take up arms against the empire reborn for a ragtag band of unknown integers?

 

They’re done. 

 

_Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it, you’ll never make it through the night._

 

Eternal night has fallen, it seems. What is one to do when the sun itself has been extinguished? Snuffed out like a candle between dampened fingertips. Hope is gone, dead with Leia. 

 

There is nothing left. 

 

Rey shudders and sinks back into her thin mattress, feeling the metal rungs of the bedframe pressing through and into her back. Her fists clench and unclench in her sheets as she ponders over her next move. What action can she take now? How can she rebuild an order while the galaxy wars and a tyrant works to extinguish any remnant of the old ways?

 

The Force pulses and quivers with the sheer agony of loss, and Rey wonders who else in the galaxy can feel it. Which wayward souls like she had been can feel the acute agony, and simply know that the fabric of existence bleeds? Children, scavengers, politicians, murderers. Anyone and no one. Maybe it is only Rey, maybe she is entirely alone in this time and place. Maybe she and Kylo Ren are the only two who remain. 

 

She doesn’t have long to grieve before something shifts in the air around her, for the second time that night the very fabric of the force itself _wavers_ , and then a dam she hadn’t known existed shatters. A flood of overwhelming pain washes over her, dragging her down into the darkest depths of despair and holding her there until she clutches her throat and swallows great, gasping gulps of its viscous poison. Her chest aches and her eyes burn in her skull, and she knows nothing beyond the treachery of her own failing body. 

 

Rey screams, and claws at her flesh, unable to distinguish between her own physical form and this ethereal onslaught of agony. 

 

_She’s dead_ A voice, loud and lost, weighed heavy and bereaved. 

 

Is that her? Her throat feels too raw to scream, vocal chords plucked like the well used strings of an instrument that has long since lost its tune. The voice weeps on.

 

_She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead._

 

_Mother._

 

Oh. 

 

Rey grunts and manages to maneuver herself into a sitting position in her bunk, groping at the wall to find her center of balance as she fights through the ceaseless waves of shame and guilt and grief and despair. None of it is her own. Her own emotions had been sensical, ordinary in the face of such a momentous loss; this is the extreme. 

 

Now that she understands she isn’t in imminent danger, isn’t _dying_ , she finds the strength to reach out for him, to offer him _something_ so that this might stop. Her vision is blurred at the peripherals, and a red haze seems to have enveloped the whole of the room. Everything is _wrong_ tilted and twisting. She stumbles to a small writing desk and slams her palms down flat onto its surface. The grain of the wood seems bend and curl, rolling like waves against her hands. She lurches forward and heaves up the contents of her stomach onto the floor. 

 

“Ben.” She weases, struggling up from her knees. Rey can feel him there, all around her, buried deep in her mind, in her chest. An inexorable piece of herself is being shred to pieces, and to preserve herself she needs to _stop_ him. 

 

“Ben!” She snarls and then she is sent tumbling backwards by another nauseating wave of vertigo, she stays down this time, laying flat on her back and letting the ceiling spin and cave towards her. 

 

Unconsciousness draws nearer and nearer, deep blue and black smears taking hold and spreading across her field of vision, like a paper over flame her sight scorches and fades. Her senses burn away until only she remains; the world beyond the prison of her mind is dead. 

 

Nearly lost to the tumult she gives one final, pathetic plea, hardly a whisper yet laden with fear and sorrow, “ _Ben_.”

 

Finally, he hears her. 

 

“Rey?” His voice is weak, broken, _pathetic_. “I—

 

“You need to stop.” She gasps, nails biting brutal into her palms. It’s just the two of them, alone at a singular point in time and space. 

 

Somewhere beyond herself Rey knows that she still lays prostrate on the cold floor of her quarters, but here she floats. 

 

She can’t see him— her eyes have failed her— but she can feel his lips moving, taste the tang of blood on his tongue, sense the salty tears that streak his pale face. Why is he bleeding? 

 

“You’re hurting me.” She manages, her voice small. 

 

This jars him, and for a moment it seems as though the torrent has ended as he stalls and absorbs her words. 

 

And then it begins anew. He tears himself asunder and her by proximity, it’s as though her own heart is twisting itself free from her chest, breaking through and leaving only a gaping maw of twisted sinew and jagged bone in its wake. 

 

Now a different sort of guilt pummels her mind. Kylo can’t stand that he’s hurt _her_. 

 

They are beyond agony now, beyond blood and bone, the ache is all consuming, nothing but throbbing, white hot tendrils wrapping and warping. They creep over Rey’s limbs and torso, reaching through her every orifice and burying themselves deep in her splitting skull. She can’t think, she can’t breathe. 

 

_Rey._

 

_Rey?_

 

_Rey!_

 

“Rey!” 

 

All at once it ends. All sensation flees her, the flames that had so voraciously engulfed her are quenched, their snapping, smoldering jaws pacified, fed full on her suffering. She is left with nothing but staggered breath and sweat slick skin. Numb from toe to scalp, Rey can only just open her heavy lids to behold the shine of a durasteel ceiling. The light of a desk lamp warps on its surface and her eyes trace the glare of it, thoughtless and glassy. 

 

“Rey?” A voice, familiar but distant. 

 

Her fingers twitch at her sides as she begins to regain feeling, her joints ache and her skin feels as though it has been drawn taut over her bones and sinew. 

 

“Rey… happen…” 

 

She registers the words as more than incomprehensible blather, but still they are broken and fail to constitute any real thought. She’s Rey, isn’t she? 

 

She isn’t so certain anymore. She could be Kylo, or Ben. The lines that had so cleanly divided them since Crait are now wholly unclear. She had felt his body as if it were her own, large and unfitting. Long legs and wide palms, salty tears and lips bitten raw by gnawing teeth. 

 

Her head is lifted into someone's lap, and a handsome face draws near enough for her to focus.

 

“We need to move her!” Finn shouts, “She’s bleeding!” 

 

_Bleeding_? That can’t be right, it had been a purely spiritual plundering, unless she had torn open her scalp when she hit the floor. She wouldn’t know otherwise, everything had ached so acutely no single wound would could have usurped the other hurts in its intensity.

 

Slowly, as she is lifted onto a gurney, her hands return to her, and then her feet; arms, legs, neck, lips; one piece after another her body is rebuilt. Her limbs are heavy, lead in her veins, cotton in her mouth. Still, she manages to lift a shaking hand to her face, feeling the trails of wet on her skin. 

 

Her fingers come away red in a salinous mixture of blood and tears.

 

A mask is pressed to her face, and as oxygen floods her withering lungs she loses consciousness.

✲

She wakes in the medbay; a heart monitor pumping rhythmically beside her. An FX-series medical droid— pre rebellion era— is organizing surgical tools on a nearby counter. Despite its age it is free of rust, and its mechanical arms glide silently as it works.

 

Rey isn’t submerged in bacta, and she feels no sting of a surgical scar… 

 

“What happened?” Her throat is raw and her voice is coarse. Suddenly her whole world revolves around the single sink attached to the far wall, the way water leaks from its faucet in slow, predictable drips. Rey licks her chapped lips and slips from the bed. Coltish on her legs she stumbles towards the basin, fumbling towards the lip of it where she catches herself with shaking palms, sweaty on the cold durasteel. 

 

She can hear the droid stirring up a fuss somewhere behind her, decrying her having so quickly leapt from her bed, but she hardly hears or cares as she fills her cupped palms with cool, clean water and _drinks_. It soothes her raw throat and washes away the foul taste she hadn’t realized had taken hold of her palate. 

 

Once she has had her fill she slowly raises her head and finds herself face to face with her own reflection. The woman who looks back isn’t Rey. 

 

Her hair is tangled and loose around her shoulders. Dim eyes stare back at her, sunken and adorned with dark, heavy circles beneath the lower lids. Her lips are cracked, the bottom one split down the center, and her skin is sallow. 

 

She looks like a wraith. She _feels_ like a wraith, a paltry creature near to death's door, knocking on it with prominent knuckles in a too slim hand. 

 

Rey is stumbling back to her bed when the door to her unit opens with a _hiss_. Finn strides in, Rose close behind him. They both wear the same expression, brows furrowed with worry. The droid must have paged them when Rey acted against its protocol. 

 

“Rey,” Finn rushes towards her where she has managed to slump on the edge of the mattress, “You need to stay down, you’re sick.”

 

“I’m not sick,” she rebukes, stubbornly. She really isn’t, whatever this is, it is a result of the… _connection_ she and Kylo had shared. It has brutalized her. 

 

“How long have I been…” She gestures to herself vaguely, uncertain of how she could possibly articulate what exactly she _is_ at the moment. 

 

“Only a day.” Finn’s voice quavers. Rey can see terror in his eyes. 

 

They must think she has some sort of wasting illness, and to deteriorate so quickly… to lose _another_ friend after Leia. 

 

_Leia._

 

In her pain Rey had forgotten, relegating that particular trauma to the back of her mind, compartmentalizing to keep herself alive. 

 

“Leia—

 

Finn’s scowl deepens, and he comes to sit beside her on the bed. “Gone. Didn’t you know? You were the one who found her.” 

 

Rey remembers. She doubts that she’ll ever forget the horror of it. Beyond the moment when she found the body, the force itself had wept; it was that rend she would carry with her for the rest of her days. No thing, living or ethereal, should ever be torn asunder so violently; but it had, and she had borne silent witness. She and Kylo Ren.

 

Rose speaks up, registering Rey’s conflicted expression as confusion. “You do remember, don’t you?” 

 

“Yes. I do, I just— I don’t know what happened. Why did she…” she can’t say it. _Die_. It’s too permanent, too damning. 

 

“Doctor Kalonia doesn’t know why. It’s like her heart just stopped beating.” Rose has taken Rey’s thin, wan hand into her own. The difference is night and day, between the glow of Rose’s skin and the pallor of her own; the roundness in the long bones of her fingers, and Rey’s protruding joints. 

 

“Just… _stopped_?” 

 

“Just stopped.” Rose breathes. She sounds exhausted. There are bags under her eyes, Finn’s too. Neither of them have slept. Yet they still look more alive than she. 

 

Finn rests his head in his hands, weary. “It was the weight of her losses, we think. It was all so much, too much. Han, Ackbar, Holdo, the fleet.”

 

_Ben_. Rey thinks in silent amendment. Ben most of all. 

 

The way the bond had blown open is disconcerting, and it’s physical ramifications even more so. Rey had wretched and bled and howled in agony with the intensity of it, and now she is a walking corpse. Was that what Ben had felt in that moment? Does his body look as ravaged as her own? Are they dying? 

 

“The funeral is tonight.” Rey can see tears welling in Rose’s wide eyes. 

 

“I need to be there.” Rey tries to stand again, but finds her knees can’t support her weight and buckle beneath her. She hits the floor with a huff, barely catching herself on her hands before her face hits the tile. 

 

“Shit!” She seethes and grapples at the bedside, refusing the help of her friends in favor of pulling herself back onto the mattress. Her hand catches on the thin sheet and she nearly slides back to the floor again, but Finn, refusing to accept her stubborn need for independence, catches her under her arms and hoists her up onto the bed. 

 

Rey collapses backwards, legs dangling awkwardly over the side as she breathes heavily, exhausted. She had hardly done anything at all, only tried to stand, and already her body cries out for respite. Laboriously, she rolls onto her side, gauging Finn and Rose’s reaction to her stumble. 

 

“Rey…” Finn begins. 

 

“I know,” she sighs, turning her face to press into the blanket, hiding the tears that prick in her eyes, “I can hardly stand up. I can’t go to the funeral.” 

 

“There’s going to be a pyre, her body will be in a palanquin filled with flowers. Some people might say some words. You won’t be missing much,” Rose exposits, “We’ll wait to scatter the ashes.” 

 

“Thank you,” Rey breathes, contorting herself into a more comfortable position. Her lids are already heavy, the utter fatigue usurps any desire to power through the weakness and attended to service despite herself. 

 

Her eyes have shut before her friends have even left the room.

✲

She dreams she’s in a cold room, it’s dark and impersonal. There are no spots of color to soften the blacks of the wall and bedspread. The table, a small one that is equipped to fold back into the wall, is barren. No food despite the hour that shows on the chrono.

 

“What is this place?” She wonders aloud, eyes sweeping over it, taking in the sterility and air of formality that seems to permeate the space. Her voice echos despite the rooms small size, ricocheting off into some distant, unseen place. 

 

The the realization dawns on her. Their resonation. Rey is seated deeply in the bond. Kylo must be nearby. 

 

“Kylo?” She calls out his chosen name. He’d made it clear to her in the throne room that Ben was an old name, a dead name. 

 

_Ben?_

 

_That’s my old name._

 

_What?_

 

_It’s time to let old things die._

 

He is Kylo Ren now.

 

A muffled grunt of acknowledgement echoes through his chambers, and she follows it to its source. The ‘fresher. The door is wide open, revealing a luxurious, wide master bath fitted with a large tub of black porcelain. A mighty contrast to the simplistic coldness of his living space. It speaks to his values; cleanliness over sleep, it would seem. 

 

She averts her eyes to the floor and flushes at the scene. Kylo is naked and reclining in the tub, steaming water rises up to his pectorals, but his lower half is visible beneath the still water. 

 

He doesn’t speak, but she can feel his weary eyes watching her with intense interest. 

 

“I thought this was over. Why now?” Why is this happening again? So many months of silence, and then all at once their minds had been thrust together. Rey had nearly been drowned in Kylo’s own grief. 

 

He ignores her question, instead posing his own; “What happened to you?”

 

Oh. Right. She looks like death warmed over. She had nearly forgotten. She feels a renewed strength here, in this melding of consciousness. She raises her gaze once more and scrutinizes him with a clinical sort of efficiency, lingering over no single part of him longer than is necessary to discern his general wellbeing. He looks better than she does, if only a little. He doesn’t seem to have lost any muscle tone, but his skin is sickly pale and the circles beneath his eyes mirror her own. 

 

She gives a wry smile, “You happened.”

 

“What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”

 

Rey snorts and gives a sardonic chuckle, “Whatever it was that happened last night, it did this to me. You… _you_ couldn’t control yourself— _your grief…_ actually I don’t particularly care what it was— you lost it, and it was enough to reopen the bond and do _this_ ,” she motions to her withered body, “to me.” 

 

“My mother…” 

 

“Is dead, Kylo.” 

 

“I— it was this _war_ that killed her,” he rushes to explain, justifying it to himself more than his ethereal companion, “During the chase, on the _Raddus_ —”

 

“You let her live. She told me.” Leia had sounded melancholic when she had recounted the tale, but she had still smiled, wanly. She had seen a glimmer of her son in that moment. Rey wonders if that is what she sees now. Are the tears that well in his eyes those of contrite, or are they a ruse meant to lull Rey into a false sense of security? Is he attempting to endear himself to her so he might ensnare her, reel her into his schemes, force her to submit to his cause?

 

In truth she fears dissuasion, not trickery. Rey fears that he will put forth an ideology to which she has no rebuttal. She fears, ultimately, that she will join him. 

 

Kylo must sense her conflict and self revulsion, and he must understand their source. “Not today, scavenger. I don’t have the energy, nor the will.”

 

Neither does she. She’s so tired. 

 

They watch each other for a tentative moment, circling like animals, wary of one another. Where Rey had once held some control over the duration of these intimate moments, it seems that she has lost even that. It won’t sever. It won’t end. They are stuck like this until the force chooses to separate them. 

 

Bone weary, Rey sinks to the floor and rests her back against the side of the tub, facing away from him, but close enough to hear his shuddering breaths. He’s still near to tears. So is she. 

 

“How long will this last? When will it end?” She wonders aloud. 

 

“When will _what_ end?” 

 

“This.”

 

The grief, the connection; the tension between them that only seems to intensify with each meeting, each spoken word, each heady glance returned under guise of scrutiny. 

 

After a moment of quiet ponderance, he replies. 

 

“It won’t.”

 

He’s right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expect weekly updates! Potentially sooner depending on my writing speed. 
> 
> Like I said in the authors note at the top, this is a gift fic won in a giveaway on my Tumblr (link below). A celebration for 1,000 followers! I originally intended to do another at 2,000, but I'm over halfway there (because I'm a slow writer), so the next giveaway will be at 2,500 *wink wink nudge nudge*
> 
> My Tumblr: [dvrkrey](https://dvrkrey.tumblr.com/)  
> 


	2. Dam the flow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pyre is burned and ashes are scattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has actually been complete for a few days now, but severe writer's block slowed my editing to a snail's pace. Sorry for the wait.

When Rey wakes she feels stronger. Her skin has regained some color, and when she tries to stand, she finds her knees steady and willing. The chrono reads that only an hour has passed. It might’ve been eons, her internal clock distorted by the bond. Dusk, then. 

 

It’ll be starting soon.

 

The droid, already tutting at her for rising up from the bed, squeals when she breaks for the door. It must be sounding some variety of silent alarm and she’s certain that someone will be here at any moment to detain her. _That just won’t do_. 

 

The door, which requires a passcode to unlock, hardly stands as an obstacle to someone so sensitive to the Force. Rey plants her feet, shuts her eyes, feels the low, reverberant, abiding hum that resonates through all things, then rips the door off of its hinges. The slab of durasteel is sent cartwheeling into the hallway, the track where it had been installed is resorted to a gash of sparking wire. It dawns on Rey that she could have hurt someone, or worse. But the regret is fleeting in the face of such sudden urgency. 

 

She flies by her quarters, no time for fresh clothes. The gown covers enough of her, and she holds few qualms over indecent exposure; Jakku had left her with little sense of bodily shame. She doesn’t fear wandering eyes, cares little for the scrutiny of the male gaze. Her body has been forged and tempered in the fires of years of strain and hardship, and she is proud of her calloused sinew and silvery scars. 

 

Upwards she moves, through the shine of durasteel and over rusted metal grates, towards the surface where she will find the pyre being prepared. Dry wood stacked and fuel applied; Leia in her palanquin of flowers and Poe leading the pallbearers. 

 

A turbolift ride, a wall panel removed and wires crossed, finally she emerges on a great rolling plain. The entrance to the bunker is ensconced in tall, golden green grass, wildflowers taking root around the metal base of it. The twilight sky is purple pink on the horizon, and blue jet overhead; stars are beginning to show their glimmering faces and a great white moon lights her way as she sprints over flower and reed alike. 

 

She can see the great pile of dead wood and brush a hundred yards off; dim, blurred figures surround it and Rey realizes that she is crying. Ben is crying too, she can feel him there in her chest, and knows that he is seeing through her eyes, wearing her skin as much as she. 

 

It only makes her run faster, exerting herself to arrive before the service begins; her bare feet are cut on hidden stone, and her ankles and calves are scratched bloody raw by the razor edges of the grass sea. She hardly feels it. Ben loans her both his strength and his grief; her chest aches and her muscles pump, and then she is there; papery gown shredded; barely conserving her modesty. 

 

“ _Rey_ ,” Finn hisses, this in neither the place nor the time for loud spoken platitudes of concern, “How are you—

 

She shakes her head. _Don’t ask_ she means. The others eye her with equal parts shock and discomfort; considering her state of undress. She ignores them with stalwart focus; she is here for Leia, nothing else. 

 

When Poe’s gaze wanders momentarily— out of concern, his eyes hold no hunger— a pang of jealousy echoes through her chest, _Ben’s chest_. It’s irrational and inappropriate. Rey scolds him mentally, but he hardly notices. She wonders if he is even aware of his momentary insolence. Does his grief usurp all other emotion?

 

The whole of the Resistance, some thirty odd survivors and new recruits, stare at her with muted awe. That a woman so gravely ill can bear to stand confounds them; Rey is unamused by their underestimation of her strength. They’ve seen her lift a mountain, why is this any more deserving of reverence? How is standing up more of a feat than lifting ten tons of solid rock? 

 

_Look_ she thinks, _Look and understand my love for this woman, my need to see her off. My mother. Not yours,_ mine. 

 

Oh. It isn’t her, then. It isn’t her heart that cries out with twisted longing; with regret and exhausted possession. Ben is here with her; inside of her. Rey clenches her fists and grinds her teeth. The sounds of the world around her are distorted; and she shares in his skin as much as he does in hers. 

 

She is surrounded by rolling fields and twinkling stars, but also by cold, suffocating walls of steel; warping her— _his_ reflection. She can feel the chill of the cycled air raising goosebumps on his skin. His limbs are large and ungainly, body too hot, eyes wet. His skin is malsuited for her, it doesn’t fit. 

 

_I share in that sentiment_. He says. And she could swear that her lips move to mouth the words. But no one acknowledges her, so the thought must have remained seated firmly in her pounding skull. 

 

Rey pushes and heaves, battling against all odds to force him _out_. This isn’t for him, Kylo Ren had made his decision and he—

 

_She was my mother, Rey. Please, let me have this._

 

Rey swallows hard, clenches her fists, and relents. _Just this once. Then you go._

 

He doesn’t reply. 

 

Leia is laid out on a bier, it could be a palanquin with the splendor of the silks and flowers that surround her, but in the grimness of the circumstances it reminds Rey of a coffin. Only there is no lid to be shut on her somber face, and she is nearly engulfed in a sea of indigenous flora. Blooms of violet and cerulean and indigo surround her like aromatic waves. Rey places her hands on the lip of the vessel, and looks onto the face of the woman she had thought to be the galaxy’s last hope. 

 

She had once mistaken Ben Solo to be that same thing, Rey resolves to never again give credence to such folly. No one person can bear the whole fate of the galaxy on their shoulders; no single being can wear the mantle of ‘last hope’. Either they all share in it, every single creature carrying within them a piece of a singular whole, ‘hope’, or there is no hope at all. Rey is beginning to lean towards the latter. A cruel thesis, but one with evidence mounting by the day. 

 

She feels Ben recoil from her, as if he could find refuge from her within the confines of her own mind. Respite from a hard truth, a truth that stings, a truth that lays bare his crimes. 

 

She refocuses her attention elsewhere; the ache in her chest is too deep to proceed any further down such a macabre path. Time for chastisement will come later. Now, they mourn. 

 

Where her hands press to the fine, hard wood, so do Kylo’s. He wonders at how he can feel the grain and varnish, how the flower petals tickle his fingertips when Rey reaches to touch one. When she snatches it away he gripes; _What did you do that for?_

 

Rey doesn’t respond, but her intentions are made clear enough by a memory that rushes forth unbidden. _Flowers pressed between the pages of a book; leather bound and worn with time. In truth most of the blooms are but simple illustrations, the imaginings of a lonely child, sketched between journal entries. Still there are two or three actual specimens, the rare desert flora that would sprout up around the stony basin of a well or trough. Pink and orange and red, they shattered the drear of Jakku’s dull palette._

 

_You liked to draw?_

 

And then there is another memory, this one offered up freely; _a boy in his hut, too-big hands clutching a too-small quill, awkward with adolescence he still feels the grain of the parchment, and his quill glides with an elegant grace that belies what he has become. He copies texts and novels and manuscripts, it matters little what the words say, only that the ink flows black and wet. Sometimes he writes his own stories; of heroes and monsters; of fathers and sons._

 

_You liked calligraphy._

 

It’s more than she wants to know of him. If it were possible or plausible she would shutter herself away, cast him from her life for good. But neither of those things can happen, and to shut him out now would be excessively cruel. Kylo Ren deserves this much, he deserves to say goodbye to his mother. Maybe it will be enough to…

 

_Now isn’t the time, Rey._

 

_Okay._

 

They look on for another moment. Leia doesn’t appear dead. Rey has seen a fresh corpse before; sunken faced and papery skinned, bruised, having fallen from some towering height. More oft than not those poor sods were left to the aptly named ripper-raptors; like Rey the creatures were scavengers, but they prefered decaying flesh to rusted steel. None of that can be seen here; she looks like she might be sleeping, as though Rey could tap her shoulder and she would awaken. Kind, dark eyes dimmed with the weight of her burdens, but alive and hopeful nonetheless. 

 

_She’s dressed in mourning clothes._

 

Rey nods and knows that Ben can feel the inclination of her head, feel the shifting of her vertebrae and the way her hair tickles on the back of her neck. 

 

When Rey had asked, Leia had explained her dark garb; Alderaanian mourning attire. From her gown to the style of her hair, she donned the widow’s wear of a dead culture, reviving a single, morbid facet of it in her grief. 

 

That Leia was mourning far more than Han, Rey keeps to herself. Though Ben seems to sense some of her hesitance. 

 

_What’s wrong?_ The concern in his voice only serves to irritate her.

 

“Nothing.” She mutters aloud, low and warning. Gritting her teeth she shoves away from the bier and spins to find Finn standing behind her. His brow his creased with his concern, dark eyes shining with sadness, illuminated by the setting sun. 

 

“What did you say?” 

 

“Nothing.” Too terse, it isn’t fair to levy her frustrations towards him, “Just… just a goodbye.” 

 

Finn pulls Rey into a fierce, unexpected embrace, fingers curling into the thin fabric of her gown. 

 

“This is really fucking difficult.” He confides. She can feel where his tears dampen her shoulder.

 

Another spike of jealousy, savage and unwarranted. 

 

“ _Stop_.” She hisses, the world a blur of real and imagined. The word spills past her lips before she comprehends what it might mean to her friend. 

 

Finn recoils from her; eyes red and lips parted in surprise. Rey feels ill. That hadn’t been for him. It was Kylo she who was attempting to rebuff. 

 

“Finn, I—

 

“No! No…” he raises his hands, feigning understanding and hiding his hurt behind a thin veil of compassion, “We all handle grief differently, I shouldn’t have done that without asking.” 

 

The pulse of satisfaction from her bondmate infuriates her. He takes a twisted, possessive sort of pleasure in watching Finn walk away, dejected. 

 

_I hate you._

 

_No, you don’t._

✲

Poe, Finn, C’ai, and Chewbacca serve as the pallbearers. Leading a grim procession towards, and then hoisting the bier up and onto the stacked drywood. Kindling has been tucked around its base to fuel the flames.

 

Words are meant to be spoken, but no one seems to dredge the strength. Silence is more fitting, besides. What could be said of this woman that isn’t already known to these who had followed her to hell and back. 

 

Rey takes a position on the far end of the line they had formed before the pyre. Away from her friends she feels more secure; as if they might scent Kylo on her, where he is fused into her soul, and cast her out for it. 

 

Chewie lights the kindling at the base of the pyre; and the flame engulfs the bier with a voracious ferocity, licking upwards and painting the blackened sky red with their mighty tongues. Rey wonders if it is Leia’s own spirit that feeds them, giving in death the same fight she had given in life. 

 

Then the air around her shifts, the sound of the crackling fire distorts and Ben is no longer in her head, but standing beside her. A grim, bereaved specter that only she can see. 

 

His eyes are wet, face red. He looks broken, shattered. 

 

The urge to reach out to him, to touch him, take his hand in her own and lend comfort, is difficult to resist. But to do so would open the door to a thousand implications she can’t bear to face, and it presents the risk of solidifying him here, in this sorrowful place, for all to see; like it had on Ahch-To. 

 

_I was afraid for you._

 

She casts an inquisitive look in his direction before quickly shifting her eyes back to the blaze. To stare at nothing is to draw attention to herself, raise concerns amongst her friends and allies that her fit had left her worse off than was originally thought. 

 

_When Luke found us. I was afraid that he had hurt you. We were severed so suddenly…_

 

Why would he think— _a boy in a hut, sleeping, all is quiet. A man with a hand of steel and wire, a pressed mind, a flick of a finger and a blade of viridian fire filling the night with hiss and spit. Fear. Fear and betrayal._

 

The pyre burns on and on. Until, finally, it doesn’t any longer. There is little remaining but a heap of ash and scraps of char. Rey doesn’t stay long enough to watch them gather the ashes. She’ll see them tomorrow, when they scatter what little remains of Leia Organa to the wind. 

 

_Call for me, when the time comes. I want to be here for it._

 

_You will be._ She replies, taciturn. She doubts any moments of blissful disconnection will last for long; they’ve been bound for hours now, the expected abrupt end and resounding silence has yet to manifest. 

 

_Promise?_ Childish, meek. 

 

He’s still just a boy, in so many ways. 

 

_I promise._

 

Rey returns to her quarters heavy hearted. All of her borrowed strength has begun to wane, and her chest aches with the weight of her burning lungs. Every step is a struggle. The cuts from her flight still bleed and sting, and her eyes burn in her skull. 

 

Kylo is still with her, but he is silent. It’s odd how, as his surroundings remain still, he follows her as she goes. When she refuses help, swatting away the helpful hands and scorning the worried words of her friends, he smiles to himself. 

 

She wants to lunge for him, to slap the smugness from his handsome face and blacken his sable eyes; but she cannot touch him. 

 

Not until she reaches her quarters. 

 

When she does, she finds them a mess; bedclothes strewn over the floor, papers and books scattered to the wind. The remnants of her failing are obvious, and the sudden wave of nausea that bleeds through to her is jarring. 

 

_I did this to you._

 

“Kylo, it’s—

 

He heaves something into a wall and it shatters, she can hear it, feel the phantom lacerations it leaves on his hand. _Don’t you dare say that ‘it’s okay’._

 

“That isn’t what I was going to say,” she seethes, relieved that here she can speak aloud, project onto him every ounce of resentment she feels, “It’s _done_ , Kylo. Let it go.”

 

_Let the past die, kill it if you have to._ She supplies in a cruel addendum. 

 

He has no answer for that.

 

Then she places her stolen flower on her bedside table; it’s sky blue. She’ll press it tomorrow. 

 

Kylo remains mum while Rey staggers into the ‘fresher, fumbling to her cabinet and removing a small first aid kit. She wipes the dirt and refuse away with a damp rag, and then sterilizes with a stinging spray before applying a smattering of bacta patches to her feet and ankles. 

 

“At least _this_ wasn’t your fault,” her laughter is sordid, “This was me. And being there was a worth a little blood. I almost didn’t make it, no thanks to you.” 

 

Ren shrinks away from her as best he can, though they are leashed, there is some give, some margin in which they can circle one another. He retreats just beyond the doorway. In his own quarters the backs of his knees are pressed to the side of his mattress, limiting his route. 

 

Her guilt is momentary, easily drowned in the exhaustion that grips her in a crushing fist. 

 

“I need to sleep.”

 

She waddles awkwardly back into the bedroom proper, stepping cautiously so as not to displace the newly applied bandages. She collapses onto her stomach, huffing as the mattress gives under her weight. With a wave of her hand her blanket lifts languidly from the floor and drapes itself over her form. 

 

Somewhere, just beyond the hazy veil of sleep, she hears him whisper, solid as if he were in the bed beside her; “Why didn’t you take my hand?”

✲

Morning comes and brings with it a pleasant silence. She pretends not to feel the emptiness in her chest, choosing to pay more mind to the newfound clear-headedness and the way the ache in her limbs has dulled.

 

Rey gathers herself, tidying her things so her rooms look less like a raging bantha was turned loose into them. Then she collects a change of clothes— some vestiges of her gown still cling to her, though most had been torn away by her stirring in the night— and makes for the ‘fresher. 

 

Removal of the bacta patches reveals only pink lines of new skin where her cuts had been, and she smiles appreciatively at the new growth; marveling at the ease with which so many can ease their hurts. She hadn’t had access to such luxury— some would call it a basic commodity, others a human right— on Jakku. Her wounds would bleed and weep and scab and scar. She’d seen the worst of what an open wound could offer, never on herself, but in the flesh of transients and fellow scavengers. Green puss, blackened flesh, lines of deep purple spreading from a wound site. The healers gave salves and poultices, but once a wound fouled there was little to be done. A blaster was a mercy. 

 

As a little girl she would wake up sweating and sobbing with nightmares of marred flesh, tetanus and infection; here those fears are long gone; foolish and unrealistic. Still, the sight of her own blood awakens something within her, something animal, primal in its anxiety. To see the reverse of that fear, soft, new skin glowing healthily beneath the fluorescence of the lights, pacifies her. 

 

Wounds clean and mind at ease, Rey presses her desired settings into the shower’s control panel, and steps in under the scalding water. She sighs, muscles relaxing in the steam, grit and grime scrubbed away with scented soap. She massages her limbs and moans at the relief it brings. 

 

She half expects the bond to flare to life. An opportune moment, it would be. Rey naked and dripping water. She isn’t ashamed of her body, she hardly cares what others do or don’t see, but _Kylo_... when Kylo looks at her there is an underlying hunger, one that raises fire to her cheeks. Others have ogled her before, sleazy smugglers and skin traders looking for an investment, but never a _man_ , never someone who acted and felt _human_ to her. 

 

The water runs cool and her shower ends without any interruption. She clothes herself in a simple grey tunic and a pair of dark capris, ties her sopping hair back, and picks up her data pad, content to bide her time until she is summoned to the scattering of the ashes. 

 

She flips through news reports; dozens of outlets spanning the whole of the galaxy, all of them chronicling the expansion of the First Order. Reports are mixed, those within Order territory speak of benevolence and mercy, those outside read of horrors and chaos, totalitarianism and enslavement. The former is likely propaganda, the latter hyperbole used to rally the complacent against the rising regime. Kylo certainly wouldn’t allow for such travesties to unfold within his borders, would he? He spoke of change; _let the past die_. The rebirth of the Empire was hardly a new beginning. 

 

“Rey?” A knock at the door. Finn. “It’s time.” 

 

She goes with them, Finn and Rose. They climb through the maze of the bunker together, and eventually step out into the morning sunlight. The breeze carries with it the scent of flowers, and the tall grass flows like golden waves under its touch. It’s beautiful, but wrong. Leia Organa is dead, the world should be weeping. 

 

As they approach the gathering— a small semi circle of friends and allies— Rey recalls Kylo’s request:

 

_Call for me, when the time comes. I want to be here for it._

 

That she takes a moment to consider ultimately disgusts her. Leia was his mother, she still is. He deserves to be present, poor decisions and insufferability aside. With more than a little irascibility she reaches out towards him, inward towards a facet of her own self. He’s there, of course, buried in her chest, somewhere behind her heart, hidden away in a place she prefers to ignore. 

 

Knowing very well that ridding herself of him could take hours, days even if the upward trend were to continue, she finds his cord within her chest and plucks at it tentatively. The world shifts on its axis, sound distorts, and he’s standing behind her, calf deep in the grass and wildflowers, a sharp contrast to his own black ensemble. And Rey is standing in front of him in his quarters, looking on to a plain, unornamented wall. 

 

_It’s time._ He states, knowingly. 

 

Rey nods, standing back from the others, positioning herself far enough away that they might not notice the stiffness of her posture, the way her fists clench at her sides in response to her sheer proximity to this utterly infuriating man. 

 

Chewie says a few words, voice heavy, eyes wet with tears. Rey hadn’t known that Wookiees cried in the same way humans did, but he does, taking staggered breaths between deep bellows of Shyriiwook. Once all eulogy is done, it is Chewie who throws the ashes to the wind; Leia’s closest remaining relative, friend, it is only right. 

 

Vindictively, Rey whispers into the air dark words, Finn would think to no one in particular, but truly they are uttered for Kylo’s ears alone. 

 

“We should have been able to do this on Alderaan. Her home. But I guess that isn’t possible, is it?” 

 

Finn and Rose both hear, and nod in agreement. 

 

_Destroyed by her own father no less._ Rey levels directly to the specter beside her. 

 

The intent is clear, the cruel meaning behind her words; Kylo follows in the footsteps of Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader. Perhaps he is no less guilty, if he so idolizes a destroyer of worlds. 

 

He is stunned into silence, and then, when he begins to cry, Rey pretends not to notice. She only looks on as what remains of Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan, is scattered to the wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said above, I'm dealing with some severe writer's block at the moment. It's stifling. I'm taking a hiatus from Tumblr and focusing all of my efforts here on Ao3 for the foreseeable future. This site provides a format that is much more conducive to productive writing. Thanks for being patient with me <3


	3. Head underwater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bond is torn open again.

Kylo severs himself from her, somehow. That he seems to exercise more control over the bond than she is vexing. It proves to her that he has been _toying_ with her. He had allowed their moments of connection to carry on beyond reason and sanity. 

 

Now it would seem that Rey’s harsh words have wounded him, and he maintains a healthy distance, no longer wishing to linger. The quiet should provide some level of satisfaction or relief, but there is only emptiness in the place he had once occupied. It’s nearly as bad as him being there, spilling vile thoughts into her own, blurring the tentative line that defines them from one another.

 

As she sits down for breakfast at one of the benched trestle tables in the mess, she finds herself unable to participate in the playful banter taking place between her friends and comrades. They laugh and poke fun, but from her there are no easy smiles, no clever japes, no boisterous laughter at the ribald remarks, only silence. She prods at the food with her fork. It isn’t appetizing. By all means, it looks fine, but she can’t bring herself to eat. Her stomach churns and she keeps her head bowed, trying to make herself small enough to escape notice. 

 

Rose _does_ take notice and elbows Finn, clearing her throat. He jerks to attention, and the movement serves to alarm Poe and T’cai as well. Suddenly all eyes are on Rey. She shifts uncomfortably on the bench and bows her head further. 

 

“Are you okay?”

 

A harmless question, asked by her closest friend, yet she can’t help but marvel at how ridiculously _stupid_ it is. Of course she isn’t _okay_. Kylo Ren, sworn enemy of the Resistance, destroyer of worlds and tyrant in all but proclamation is tearing her apart from the inside out. And in some cosmic jest, the only person in whom she could have hoped to confide is dead; and it is her death that has served as the catalyst of this suffering. 

 

Rey is completely and utterly alone. She always has been, really.

 

She voices none of these things to Finn, only nods her head and replies with a weak, “I’m fine.” 

 

It’s pathetic and transparent, but none of her friends press her further. _Jedi stuff_ , they must assume. They see her as something beyond them, and she hates it. 

 

Finn, ever attentive, nudges her tray closer, “You need to eat, you’re still weak.” 

 

True enough, she’s still gaunt faced and weak kneed. She manages to choke down some fruit and a half heel of bread before slinking back to her quarters. She can feel the concerned eyes that follow her retreat from the mess hall. 

 

Once she reaches her rooms she staggers into the ‘fresher where she promptly wretches her meager meal back up and into the toilet bowl. Half digested. No nutrients gained. 

 

She collapses backward and her head connects painfully with the wall. She hisses and slides down the length of it until she is spread eagle on the floor. The tile is cold under her fingertips and the smooth, white plaster of the ceiling is warped by the tears welling in her eyes. 

 

The guilt is sudden and unbidden. She wonders momentarily if they are resonating again, the bond flaring to life, emotions bleeding, ink in water. Her ability to discern herself from _him_ has become increasingly impaired. Reality has become subjective. But there are no words, no thoughts but her own, and she knows that it is her. Her own guilt and sorrow and grief. She sobs, fingers pulling at her hair, digging into her scalp until she feels warm blood on their tips.

✲

The quiet lasts for six, maddening days. Each brings with is another layer of difficulty; eating becomes laborious, bathing a chore, hydration unappealing, even water is expelled, wretched onto the floor. Training is well beyond her now, her body is too weak, too tired from so many sleepless nights.

 

Her friends see through it, this paltry attempt at a resilient facade. They try to help, to offer advice or seek out the cause of her anguish, in turn she distances herself from them. With each passing day she establishes another level of removal, of disconnect between herself and her staunchest allies, her closest friends. 

 

They are different from her, to them everything is astoundingly simple; destroy the First Order, execute Kylo Ren, restore democracy and prosperity to a bleeding galaxy. For her things are hardly so certain, so binary. Beyond the destruction of the Order— a feat in its own right, and one she isn’t confident in the morality of— she has the Jedi to rebuild and reform. Then there is the matter of Kylo Ren…

 

_Let the past die, kill it if you have to._

 

What if there is some element of truth to his words? A wisdom forged through years of strife and suffering at the hands of not one, but two failed teachers. Luke with his negligence and ultimate betrayal, and Snoke with his poisoned words and honied torture. 

 

How many republics have failed? How many empires? Kylo offers an alternative, or so he claims, but his means to achieve such a goal… 

 

Her distance is noted, and the disconnect has become palpable. 

 

On the third day of her self imposed isolation she overheard an exchange between Finn and Rose.

 

_Back pressed to the wall, she listened. Words spoken in quiet confidence. The hanger bay well past midnight is the perfect place for such an exchange, empty, all of its usual denizens having long since gone. Sleeping the days work away in their own quarters. Rey had come to find some quiet of her own; a place outside of her rooms where she might find some manner of thing to tinker with, to distract her idle hands. Instead she found what felt like a betrayal._

 

_“I just don’t understand what changed?” Finn lamented, the despair in his hushed voice was easy enough to place, “When we first met she was so witty and lively, and just… I don’t know, fun? A good friend? Now… Now it’s like that Rey is gone.”_

 

_“I didn’t know her then, but I can tell you what I’ve observed.” Rose offered with a hint of sympathy._

 

_“Okay.”_

 

_“You might not like what I have to say, Finn.”_

 

_“Just tell me.” Terse, short. He was at his wits end._

 

_“When I first saw her on the_ Falcon, _staring at that broken lightsaber, she seemed so distant, like she was there physically, but her mind was a thousand lightyears away,” her tone was gentle, and Rey was sure that she’d laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder, “Her eyes are old eyes, Finn. I don’t think you’ll ever really understand what she’s thinking, where this is all coming from. It’s beyond us.”_

 

_Old eyes._

 

At first she had perceived it as a slight. _Old eyes._ But now she understands the meaning behind the words. She feels a thousand years old, buckling under the weight of her burdens. Maybe she is old, a vector of the force incarnated into a physical body, a tool to be used time and time again. Are there past lives that she has lived? Has she been party to this brutal cycle before?

 

It is now, on the sixth day, that their minds are bridged again. Neither have volunteered themselves, so it would seem that the force is tired of waiting for them to resolve their petty squabble. Petty in the grand scheme, that is. 

 

“Why now?” She groans, awoken early in the morning hours, if her chrono is to be trusted. 

 

The tilt of the room is disorienting, but she manages to sit up, and finds Ren laying beside her, stiff on the sheets. In his own quarters she appears much the same way; sat still on his mattress, wide eyed. 

 

“I’m not happy about it either.” Curt. He’s still upset with her. 

 

She can feel the warmth of his, smell his scent; soap and musk. It’s pleasant in a way she cares not to consider. 

 

“It’s always intimate moments,” she grouses, “Never practical.” 

 

Kylo snorts, “When has the force ever been _practical_.” 

 

“I lifted rocks with it once,” she blurts in example, a bit too loudly. Ren grumbles and shifts beside her. 

 

“So did I, when I was a _child_.” 

 

She ignores the insult and elaborates, “On Crait, I lifted the boulders to open up the mine, that’s how—

 

“You and your rebel friends escaped,” he interjects, “I know. I saw the evidence myself.”

 

“The force was practical then.” Rey asserts.

 

“Since when is lifting rocks with your mind practical?” He sniffs, indignation evident, still wholly displeased by their proximity and this odd reversal of roles, “Every use of the force is contrived. None of it makes any sense.”

 

“Luke said something similar.” 

 

“Don’t talk about him.” His attempt at intimidation falls flat, belied by the fear in his voice. If she were to turn and look at him, she would see that same fear in his eyes, his posture, the quiver of his lip. 

 

“He tried to kill you.” She uses his own truth rather than the objective medium she has discerned to be true. 

 

“Stop.”

 

“No. We’re going to talk.” She can’t stand the emptiness any longer. She needs some relief, some balm to soothe the ache; and he is her only option. 

 

“Quite the shift in attitude from a week ago.”

 

He’s right, but she has questions to ask and apologies to make. And the loneliness still lingers; she’ll draw these moments out as long as she can. 

 

Knees pulled flush to her chest, she fully acknowledges him with her eyes. He’s stripped down to a pair of briefs, all of his pale musculature exposed to behold. He looks well enough, only dark semi-circles under his eyes hint at his torment. A far cry from her own half starved body. 

 

Why does it affect them so disproportionately?

 

“A family tradition.” He mumbles and throws and arm over his eyes. 

 

“Huh?”

 

“Attempted murder. That’s what Skywalker’s do. Sometimes we succeed.”

 

“Han,” she offers. 

 

“Padmé,” he replies. 

 

“Who’s that?” She is still dubious to the whole of the Skywalker family history, she knows enough to piece together a vague picture. Vader and Luke and redemption. Fathers and sons. Padmé is a woman's name. One that Rey is unfamiliar with. 

 

“My grandmother.” Hesitant.

 

But Breha— _Oh_. Leia had been adopted as a baby. Padmé must have been the biological mother of Leia and Luke. The late general had explained her past, Alderaan and her family, but she had never mentioned this Padmé.

 

Kylo swallows his discomfort and offers in vague explanation; “Before my grandfather, Anakin, became Darth Vader, he had a wife. Luke and Leia’s mother. It was his love for her that ultimately killed her.” 

 

Something that lurks behind his sad, dark eyes compels her to whisper, “I’m not Padmé.”

 

“I know,” his gaze flicks to the ceiling, “You aren’t Padmé, and I’m not Anakin.”

 

The meaning behind the words is clear. 

 

_I could never hurt you._

 

Something else, too. She feigns obliviousness.

 

“In the throne room, Snoke wanted me to kill you. Anakin killed Padmé for Palpatine, whether he knew it or not. But I couldn’t hurt you.” He feels betrayed. Betrayed that she hadn’t joined him, hadn’t taken his hand. 

 

Rey swallows hard and steers the conversation in a direction that weighs less heavily on her conscience, “I…” her voice wavers, but still, there is strength, “That was unfair of me, at the scattering,” her eyes drop to her knees, “Alderaan… You weren’t even born yet, I just—

 

“Don’t, what’s done is done.” 

 

_Let the past die…_

 

And yet, she can still feel his relief at her apology. A weight lifted from his shoulders. 

 

“None of this should have happened.” Rey whispers, falling back onto her pillow and clasping her fingers on her stomach. She maintains a healthy distance from him, but still revels in his presence. For the first time in six days she feels… _whole_. 

 

“We belong together, Rey.” He replies, soft and non-accusatory.

 

He’s right, of course. But neither of them will relent. They’ll die like this, caught in a deadlock of waring wills. 

 

“I don’t want to kill you, Ben.” 

 

“Then don’t.”

 

“Are you going to give me a choice?” 

 

“I am, right now. Don’t kill me.” He’s half joking. She doesn’t find it funny.

 

“If you continue down this path, I won’t have a choice.” 

 

He rolls to face her, and when he brushes to backs of his knuckles over her cheekbone she doesn’t wince away. His touch feels good, warm, gentle, “You can’t kill me, and I can’t kill you.” 

 

She shakes her head, and shifts her gaze to the ceiling, hiding her uncertainty, “I’m not you, Ben.”

 

“No, but we’re connected. I know you in ways no one else can. _You couldn’t kill me if you wanted to._ ”

 

“I do want to.” 

 

“No you don’t.”

 

She sighs, and shifts on the sheets. Eyes still averted, her hand seeks out his own. He willingly threads his fingers through hers. 

 

“Come back to me, Ben.” Her thumb brushes fleetingly over the back of his hand. 

 

“No.” His voice is neither demanding nor angry, just soft, “You come back to _me_.” 

 

“I was never with you.”

 

“Yes you were, in the hut, in the throne room,” he exposits, “We waylaid each other’s loneliness, we fought as a singular being, if only just for a moment.” 

 

“That doesn’t matter now.” 

 

“It will always matter, Rey.” His grasp on her hand tightens and he shifts closer, “Look at me.” 

 

“No.” 

 

“ _Please_.”

 

“Rey…” 

 

She relents and flips onto her side, letting go of his hand. She gasps when she finds how near to her he lies. She can feel his breath on her skin, taste it on her tongue; sweet. It would be so simple to lean forward and— 

 

_He kisses her._

 

Chaste, gentle. He doesn’t probe, doesn’t overstep his bounds. The press of his mouth is soft on her own chapped lips. 

 

When she jerks away he remains still. Watching her curiously, gauging her reaction. She reels, catching herself before she rolls off of the mattress and onto the floor. 

 

“What… what was that, Ben?” Incredulous. She hadn’t— _She doesn’t know…_

 

“I’m in love with you.” 

 

_No._

 

“Don’t do this Ben.” She can’t look at him, can’t peer into those sad, sable eyes and see the truth swirling in their earnest depths. “Not now.”

 

“Rey—

 

“You hardly know me, Ben.” An excuse. “You know nothing about me. You aren’t in love with me. You’re infatuated with the power I wield. I’m just a means to an end.” 

 

“That’s a lie.” 

 

“If you win me you win the galaxy! Without me the Jedi Order would die, you’d have everything you want and more!” Shouting, someone could hear, hear and override her lock, override her lock and find her, find her with _him_. She had touched him, held his hand. He’s manifested physically, anyone could see. She’d be heralded as a traitor. 

 

“Stop lying,” the evenness of his voice in the face of such accusations is unnerving. “Stop _deluding_ yourself,” there it is, the ferocity and frustration she had seen in the throne room, _you’re not letting go_ , “We’re in each other’s _heads_ Rey. I know you better than any of your Resistance _friends_.” 

 

“Stop.”

 

“I know it. Your pain, the turmoil you feel. I know how _lonely_ you are, Rey.”

 

“Stop!” Knuckles white she clutches the sheets. She’s crying.

 

“I’ve seen your dreams. I know the hunger you’ve felt. The cold nights, spent alone. Hot days spent in tedium, hauling scrap and subsisting on rations. No payoff. Nothing.” 

 

“ _Please_ ,” She weeps, face buried in the blanket, ruddy with tears. 

 

“I know about the wall Rey.” At the revelation a deep, heaving sob wracks her chest, “The tallies, thousands of days. Wasted. Waiting for a family that never came.” 

 

_They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert._

 

He draws near, weight shifting, causing the ancient rungs of the bunk to creak; singing his approach. She can feel his warmth, hear how his heart thunders in his chest, the jiltedness of his breath. Is he nervous? Excited? Does he take some sick pleasure in causing her this pain? 

 

“I know you, and you know me.” He whispers, mouth beside her ear. His breath tickles where is ghosts her skin. 

 

Rey does know him. The conflict within him, the neglect and betrayal. They way he _aches_ inside. Nanny droids and nights spent crying in one dark room or another— he had been afraid of the dark, and they hadn’t known, hadn’t taken the time to discover, but Rey knows— Rey knows of his dreams and aspirations, quashed time and time again; pilot, Jedi, it made no difference. She knows of the creeping dark fingers, tendrils taking hold, constricting until he couldn’t breathe, poisoning his mind. She knows what it is to wake to a beam of spitting green, dead sleep cut clean by veridian fire. Eyes of rage, of fear. Fire and ashes. Lightning and agony.

 

Rey knows Ben solo. 

 

But to do this now, confess this _now_ , to profess _love_... it’s cruel. How can he do this, after all he has done, after all _she_ has done. It’s too late. They’re too far gone. Neither of them will relent from their respective ideals and dogmas. Neither will leave their beliefs behind, sacrifice them to go to the other. They’re stuck. Binary stars circling and circling, held at length by forces beyond themselves. 

 

How could he do this to her?

 

“This doesn’t change anything.” 

 

“It could.” _Come to me._

 

“It won’t.” _I can’t._

 

“From the moment I first saw you I knew we were the same, Rey.”

 

Finally, she raises her head to face him, skin still ruddy, tears dry. He’s close, face beautiful and aqualine, only a scant few inches from her own. The conviction in his eyes is firey, it frightens her. 

 

“If you would join me,” He looks at her with the same hope he had in the throne room, when fire had rained around them, when they had fought as one. He had looked so boyish, innocent. “We could change _everything_.” 

 

“You would build another empire.” There is no bite to her words, she can’t find the will within herself to be angry, can muster no contempt. This man is adept at building her up only to shatter her again. 

 

Their foreheads are almost touching. She can’t look away from his mouth, the fullness of his lips, the way they tremble. 

 

“No,” his words are suddenly clumsy, as if he hadn’t expected the rebuff. Perhaps he doesn’t know her as well as he claims. “That’s not—

 

“That’s exactly what it is, Ben.” She leans forward ever so slightly and returns his kiss. Closure. 

 

When she pulls away she finds her resolve renewed, “Leave.” She isn’t malicious, only monotone, taciturn. 

 

“Rey…” 

 

“It’s time to go, Ben.” 

 

He sobs. So many tears shed this night. Has it been worth the pain?

 

“ _I love you_.” 

“I know.” 

 

This time it is she who severs the bond. She takes no pleasure in the accomplishment. It hurts. Stars, does it hurt. Betrayal, sorrow. She doesn’t know what to feel. Sleep evades her, so she retreats into the ‘fresher, bathing herself in scalding water like it might wash away the despair in which she flounders. 

 

It’s only once she has stepped back into the chill, cycled air of her quarters that she realizes what name she had called him by. 

 

Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer's block be damned, I'm making this happen. I've switched to writing in a notebook rather than on my laptop, then transferring everything over. It really helps, surprisingly. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Next chapter will be wrapping things up, maybe... depending on how I pace it I might add a fifth. We'll see.

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr: [dvrkrey](https://dvrkrey.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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